Dior by Dior: The Autobiography of Christian Dior

The Autobiography of Christian Dior

Christian Dior, Antonia Fraser

• Publisher: V&A Publishing
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781851776719
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

Christian Dior (1905-1957) rocketed to fame with his first collection in 1947 when the 'New Look' took the world by storm. Originally published in 1957, this charming and modest autobiography gives a fascinating and detailed insight into the workings of a great fashion house, while revealing the private man behind the high-profile establishment.

This book is part of theV&A Fashion PerspectivesSeries. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

Part One

The Birth of Maison Christian Dior

I

The Reluctant Couturier

The most important feature of my life – I would be both ungrateful and untruthful if I failed to acknowledge it immediately – has been my good luck; and I must also acknowledge my debt to the fortune-tellers who have predicted it.

I first had my fortune told when I was very young. It was in 1919, at a bazaar near my home, organized to raise funds for the soldiers. There was every kind of sideshow and we all took some part in it. I dressed myself up as a gypsy, suspended a basket round my neck by ribbons, and sold lucky charms. In the evening, when the crowds were thinning out, I found myself next to the fortune-teller’s booth. She offered to read my palm.

‘You will suffer poverty,’ she said. ‘But women are lucky for you, and through them you will achieve success. You will make a great deal of money out of them, and you will have to travel widely.’

At the time I attached absolutely no importance to her prediction, which seemed to me to be complete nonsense, but when I went home I reported it faithfully to my parents. The ambiguous phrase: ‘You will make a great deal of money out of women’ has since been fully explained, but at the time it must have seemed as strange to my parents as it did to me – they were certainly as ignorant of the white slave trade as they were of haute couture! And they would as soon have believed that their son could be involved in one as in the other. The threat of poverty also seemed inexplicable, and as for travel – there were roars of laughter in the family circle:

‘Imagine Christian a great traveller! Think of the fuss he makes just going to see a friend.’

I wonder if my parents would have recognized me at the end of 1945 when the adventure of Christian Dior was just beginning? I scarcely recognized myself. I had spent ten happy years in the world of haute couture, as a designer at Lucien Lelong; it was a delightful existence – I had none of the responsibilities of putting my designs into practice, on the one hand, nor the burden of an executive job on the other. With the end of the war, the departure of the army of occupation, and above all the return home of my sister who had been deported (a return incidentally which had been obstinately predicted by a fortune-teller, even at the worst moments of our despair), I was free once more to lead the life of peaceful anonymity which I loved. An unhappy chapter of my life had ended. On the fresh, still unblemished page before me, I hoped to record nothing but happiness.

My optimism enabled me to forget temporarily that we were still living in the aftermath of a terrible war. Traces of it were all around me – damaged buildings, devastated countryside, rationing, the black market, and less serious, but of more immediate interest to me, hideous fashions. Hats were far too large, skirts far too short, jackets far too long, shoes far too heavy . . . and worst of all, there was that dreadful mop of hair raised high above the forehead in front, and rippling down the backs of the French women on their bicycles.

I have no doubt that this zazou style originated in a desire to defy the forces of occupation and the austerity of Vichy. For lack of other materials, feathers and veils, promoted to the dignity of flags, floated through Paris like revolutionary banners. But as a fashion I found it repellent.

There was only one wartime custom which I was sad to see disappearing: lack of petrol had forced us all to go everywhere on foot and, without realizing it, we Parisians had begun to enjoy these pleasant strolls which led to chance encounters with our friends and long idle gossips en route.

It was in fact in the course of one of these pilgrimages from the rue Saint Florentin to the rue Royale, where I was then living, that I actually met my fate! It appeared to me in the rather humdrum shape of a childhood friend, with whom I had played long ago on the beach at Granville, and whom I had not seen for years. He was now a director of Gaston, a couture house in the rue Saint Florentin, and had apparently heard that I had become a designer.

Gesturing wildly, he exclaimed that our meeting was the most wonderful coincidence. Marcel Boussac, the owner of Gaston, wanted to reorganize the whole house drastically and was busy looking for a designer capable of infusing new life into it. Did I know the man-in-a-million capable of undertaking this formidable task? I thought hard for a few moments before telling him regretfully that I could think of no one who would do . . . I still wonder why I never thought of suggesting myself.

However, Fate did not let me escape so easily. I ran into my old friend of the beach a second time, on exactly the same pavement between the rue Saint Florentin and the rue Royale. He still had not found his man-in-a-million. It still did not occur to me to suggest myself.

Before making a third attempt, Fate prepared the scene a little. Pierre Balmain, one of my fellow designers at Lelong, decided to leave and start a new house under his own name – very successfully, as it has turned out. This had the effect of making me think seriously about my own future; for the first time, I wondered whether I was really devoid of personal ambition. It was true that I was extremely happy at Lelong and got on well with everyone there, but I was working all the time to achieve the financial success of another man. I was also toiling in the bonds of his creative inspiration, since my loyalty to Lelong prevented me from expressing my own rather different ideas.

When Fate brought me face to face with the inquiring face of my friend for the third time, on the same piece of pavement, my mind was made up. Without realizing for a moment that I was altering the whole course of my life, I said boldly:

‘After all this, would I do?’

These comparatively harmless words were scarcely out of my mouth than I was overcome with horror. I suddenly foresaw the dreadful consequences of my rashness. First of all, I should have to meet the famous Marcel Boussac, head of the Comptoir de l’Industrie Cotonnière (CIC), which alone seemed an insurmountable obstacle to someone as shy as me. But that was not all. I should have to deal with a host of business men who knew nothing about couture, and the very word ‘business’, with its sinister implications, had always terrified me. Worst of all was the prospect of something called a ‘business lunch’. Hitherto I had always associated lunch with the infinitely pleasanter topic of food! Now, before meeting Marcel Boussac for the first time, I was to talk things over with his right-hand man, M. Fayol, in the course of one of these grim functions.

I was greatly relieved to find that M. Fayol wore neither a black jacket, nor striped trousers, nor a stiff collar; the pockets of his waistcoat were not stuffed with agenda, memoranda, and fountain pens, and, like me, he enjoyed his food. Best of all, he did not cross-examine me with searching questions and try to trip me up when I answered. A large, kindly, good-natured man, he was anxious to put me at my ease, and was completely straightforward in his discussions with me. Furthermore he appreciated feminine elegance, because his own wife, Nadine Picard, adored clothes. At all events, he seemed prepared to believe that my ignorance of business was not a sign of mental deficiency and, for my part, I hope I didn’t create the impression of a guileless innocent trying to earn his living in a hard world!

As a matter of fact, that was exactly how I thought of myself, and it took me a long time to overcome this complex of mine. Having entered very late into this profession where others had spent a lifetime learning, and having had no training to guide me except my own instincts, I had always been afraid of betraying my ignorance of it. Perhaps it was this very fear of remaining the perpetual amateur that spurred me on to brush aside my doubts at last, and invent the character of Christian Dior, couturier.

When M. Fayol and I parted, I think we were quite pleased with what we had seen of each other. We agreed that the first essential step was for me to pay an extended visit to Maison Gaston, in order to see how the business was run. It was a splendid excuse for me to put off making any serious decision and delay the fatal day when I would have to leave Lelong.

Three days later I entered what had first been christened with a great flourish, in the summer of 1925, ‘Maison Philippe et Gaston’. As a schoolboy, I remembered gazing at the exquisite pastel-coloured clothes which the beautiful Hughette Duflos had bought from this house. Later it became quite simply ‘Gaston’, and unfortunately suffered a great deal from wartime difficulties and restrictions; it now only dealt with furs, and had an old-fashioned atmosphere which, personally, I thought it would be impossible to get rid of.

I inspected the whole business from top to bottom most conscientiously, but from the word go I was convinced that Marcel Boussac would be wasting his time and money in trying to restore Gaston to its former glory. So many others before me had tried to resurrect once famous names without success: the existence of a couture house is fraught with dangers and its life-span is often far shorter than that of the men who run it. My heart sank at the thought of the hazards involved; the cobwebs which would have to be swept away, the difficulties of coping with a staff which had been set in its ways for so many years and would certainly resent changes – in short, the impossibility of making ‘something new out of something old’ in a trade where novelty is all important. As I left Gaston, I decided that I was not meant by nature to raise corpses from the dead.

The answer was definitely no.

I must admit that I was secretly very relieved. Now I would not have to face Lelong with the news that I was leaving: I would not have to take an interest in ‘business’; I could sink back into my pleasant little rut, to which I was so sentimentally attached. After so many years of hardship I was prepared to cling tenaciously to it.

Consequently I went to CIC the next morning with a light heart, knowing that nothing would come of it, because I intended to refuse Boussac’s offer politely but firmly. I found him waiting for me and took an instantaneous liking to both the man and his surroundings. There were plenty of books, some beautiful pieces of Empire furniture and a desk on which a bronze racehorse (a model of one of the favourites of the master of the house) had pride of place. Behind it, on the wall, hung a gouache of Rome.

In the centre of all this was the great man himself. Of medium height and stockily built, he had a determined forehead, square jaw, and very precise speech and gestures; but a genuinely charming smile lit up this otherwise rather severe appearance. As I sat down facing him, I suddenly realized what my true ambition was. Here was a famous financier, who was at the same time a man of wide and cultivated intelligence. I knew him already to be the son of Mme Jeanne Catulle-Mendès and the husband of Fanny Heldy, whom I had so often admired at the opera. Obviously his interests extended far wider than the two subjects on which I was so lamentably ignorant – money and horses. I felt that we should get on extremely well together.

Shy people often have a very abrupt way of speaking. I suddenly heard myself telling him that what I really wanted to do was not to resurrect Gaston, but create a new couture house under my own name, in a district of my own choosing. I wanted a house in which every single thing would be new: from the ambiance and the staff, down to the furniture and even the address. All around us, life was beginning anew: it was time for a new trend in fashion. Greatly daring, I described the house of my dreams. It would be small and secluded, with very few workrooms; within them the work would be done according to the highest traditions of haute couture; the clothes, which would give an impression of simplicity, would in fact involve elaborate workmanship and would be aimed at a clientèle of really elegant women. After the long war years of stagnation, I believed that there was a genuine unsatisfied desire abroad for something new in fashion. In order to meet this demand, French couture would have to return to the traditions of great luxury: which was why I envisaged my house as a craftsman’s workshop, rather than a clothes factory.

Out of breath, and amazed at my own temerity, I stopped short. Marcel Boussac had heard me out with great patience and, before escorting me to the door, he told me that although I had outlined quite a different plan to him from the one he had envisaged, and mine was perhaps rather over-ambitious, nevertheless my ideas interested him and he would like to have time to think them over. Secretly I felt that he must have been amazed at my own high opinion of myself! As for me, I was still suffering from the shock of discovering that having gone to see him in order to say ‘no’, I ended up by outlining a plan which sounded very like ‘yes’.

Several days elapsed before I heard that the Boussac group were definitely interested in my project – days in which I suffered tortures of doubt. I had begun to hope so fervently that nothing would come of it that this favourable reply horrified me. Was I going to have to break the news of my departure to Lucien Lelong – who also happened to be a great personal friend of Marcel Boussac – after all? What on earth had I let myself in for?

But I had gone too far to turn back now. I could no longer conceal from myself that I had entered into definite negotiations with the Boussac group. However, as we began to plan the details of the business, unexpected difficulties arose. On my side, my intransigence arose not from conceit, but from a secret unacknowledged desire to escape from the whole thing. This feeling of panic eventually led me to send a telegram breaking off negotiations completely.

It was at this juncture that I went to see Madame Delahaye, the fortune-teller who had obstinately predicted that my sister would return from deportation.

She ordered me sternly to accept the Boussac offer at once. ‘You must create the house of Christian Dior, whatever the conditions,’ she told me. ‘Nothing anyone will offer you later will compare with the chance which is open to you now.’

In face of her complete confidence in my future, I bowed my head, or to be honest, I resigned myself to the inevitable. A telephone call to M. Fayol and a few hasty explanations undid the effects of my telegram of refusal. Negotiations were resumed. My fit of bad temper had been exhausted and it now proved unexpectedly easy to reach an agreement with M. Boussac.

I plucked up my courage to break the news of my departure to Lelong, or rather I went and discussed it first with Madame Raymonde. It was she who had introduced me to Lelong: we had become great friends, and in the past she had frequently given me excellent advice, acting as my guardian angel. I had hinted to her some time back about my negotiations with the Boussac group, and she had made up her own mind to leave the avenue Matignon with me, in order to back me up in my new enterprise. It was more for my sake than for hers, that she asked a friend to go and consult another very secret fortune-teller called the Grandmother about the future of my house.

Apparently when she was shown a piece of paper on which I had scribbled a few meaningless sentences, the Grandmother went into raptures:

‘This is astonishing!’ she exclaimed. ‘This house is going to revolutionize fashion!’

She painted such a dazzling picture of the future that we did not dare to believe all she told us. But the mere fact that her verdict agreed with that of my own fortune-teller gave me the necessary impetus to break the news to Lelong. In spite of all his promises, above all in spite of my deep personal attachment to him, I stuck to my guns that I was leaving, with Mme Raymonde and Mme Delahaye to back me up. It was decided that I should do two more collections for Lelong, in order to be able to show round my successor.

I can never thank Lelong sufficiently for the kindness and understanding which he showed me in accepting the fact that my mind was made up. We parted on the best of terms – in fact the only flaw in our parting was my own regret at leaving a house where I had been so peacefully happy for so long.

Once I had quitted my dear friend and most generous employer, the worry of finding a suitable house in which to set up my new business became uppermost in my mind. I knew exactly what I wanted – it was the house which I had described to Marcel Boussac – but I had no idea where to find it. Many years before my decisive interview with him, I had in fact stopped short in front of two small houses side by side in the avenue Montaigne – numbers 28 and 30. To my friend Pierre Colle, the art dealer, who was with me, I pointed out their neat, compact proportions, and air of sober elegance without the least hint of ostentation. Pierre had been the first...